Yellow grass and unnaturally bare soil around public trees and paths is increasingly a vision of the past, as indiscriminate use of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate is phased out by councils. But changing the way the public realm looks is not without controversy, with some complaining so-called weeds make urban spaces unsightly.
Heavily used in farming, glyphosate’s non-agricultural use extends to parks and green spaces, pavements and playgrounds, hospitals and shopping centres. Since the WHO declared it a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015, after research found “strong” evidence for its toxicity, 70 to 80 UK councils have turned to chemical-free options or simply letting plants grow, from Bath & North East Somerset council, to Highland council in Scotland.
Nick Mole, from Pesticide Action Network (PAN), which campaigns against glyphosate, said that in the past few years an increasing number of councils, “from parish up to county”, have implemented small-scale trials to wholesale bans.
“More and more over the last couple of years we’ve been having councils come directly to us to say: ‘This is something we want to do; how can we do it?’,” said Mole.
Biodiversity crisis
Recent research revealed glyphosate seriously harms bee health, while another report claimed EU regulators dismissed evidence linking the herbicide to animal tumours.
“I think there has been a growth in public interest and of course we’ve had the ever increasing news of the biodiversity crisis,” he said. “I think councils have seen that this is something their voters want – and this is councils across the whole entire political spectrum, as well – it’s a very non-party political issue.”
However, PAN admits some councils later roll back measures, concerned about the “neat and tidy brigade”.
Brighton and Hove went glyphosate-free in 2018 under the former Labour administration with unanimous cross-party support. However, local Conservative councillors have since begun appearing in local newspapers complaining about rewilding having gone too far.
Green Brighton and Hove councillor, Jamie Lloyd, says it’s not about leaving weeds everywhere, but selectively removing them. “It is true that huge weeds growing in the middle of pavements is undesirable,” he said. “So what we need to do is remove those weeds manually”
And Lloyd says comments he hears while weeding pavements himself indicate it’s “more popular than the sensationalist headlines suggest”.
“I do agree that you don’t want pavements impassable for people with mobility issues. Actually, the biggest problem for people with mobility issues is people parking their cars on the pavement, which is [a] massive [issue] in Brighton.”
As far as the glyphosate ban goes, Lloyd says “the benefits are already tangible”, with anecdotally more swifts, swallows and bats seen locally, and a hedgehog spotted in Hove.
He adds: “We are in a biodiversity emergency. We’ve lost so many insects in the last 20 years – I’ve read [about] declines of 60%. This is spectacular and extremely worrying – it’s the canary in the mine. We’ve got to throw everything we can at this, and the first thing we can do is stop poisoning them.”
Protests
Jon Burke was a Hackney councillor responsible for the east London borough beginning to phase out glyphosate in 2018, after children protested against its use outside the town hall. A borough-wide ban began in 2020.
Burke said: “The major threat presented by glyphosate is the fact that we’re eliminating plants from the public realm in the middle of a mass extinction event.
“The majority of plants growing in the public realm are not weeds, but a mix of wildflowers and other things. Some of these plants are the only source of food for very specific species of insects. What I wanted to do was change the perception in Hackney, and potentially more broadly in the UK, of what a clean and tidy public realm is. We’ve grown up with this reaction that any kind of plant in the public realm makes it look scruffy and untidy – and yet we have a simultaneously high tolerance in the UK for McDonald’s wrappers in the gutters.”
Councils have tried different approaches when it comes to replacing glyphosate. Bath and North East Somerset stopped using the weedkiller in July last year in favour of manual or machine weeding. A £950k Clean and Green campaign was introduced with a dedicated weeding team, while volunteers can also borrow hoes, brushes and shovels. Councillor David Wood said this had “a positive response and support from residents”.
Other councils have tried alternative weedkillers. In April, PAN revealed London councils were using a “toxic cocktail” of 22 potentially harmful weedkillers, including seven carcinogens and nine that contaminate ground water.
Mole said that while “the use of glyphosate dwarfs the use of almost every other weedkiller: it’s cheap, it works, and it’s in a lot of products”, replacing one chemical with another was not the answer.
He said it was about working out the best approach for each area, from hoeing, raking and manual weeding, to hot foam, which combines hot water with a biodegradable insulating foam to kill plant material, or even leaving plants to grow.
Burke thinks national legislation is needed to ramp up councils’ efforts. “Local authorities shouldn’t just decide, in the middle of a mass extinction event, whether or not they play a role in whether British crops can be pollinated or whether we sustain insect populations.
“The ways in which local authorities might want to do that could differ, but I don’t think that should be optional as to whether you completely sanitise the public realm or not.”
